Nice Long Read: The Great Works of Software

[mouser]

Nice long blog essay looking at some influential software programs.

So I set myself the task of picking five great works of software. The criteria were simple: How long had it been around? Did people directly interact with it every day? Did people use it to do something meaningful? I came up with the office suite Microsoft Office, the image editor Photoshop, the videogame Pac-Man, the operating system Unix, and the text editor Emacs.

https://medium.com/p/705b87339971

from waxy.org

[Shades]

A decent read. 

But I do think he forgot about the old, venerable CVS.

Agreed, not that many people are familiar with it, but CVS comes with a history of 24-25 years and did affect the way people treat and contribute to code...to this very day.

PUTTY might also be subject for inclusion as provides a very robust way of communicating with remote Linux machines for more than 15 years and more Operating Systems than you would think.

[tomos]

A very enjoyable read

At the start he mentions code:

Is it possible to ... enumerate great works of software that are deeply influential—that changed the nature of the code that followed?

but, then he changes the criteria to a different sort of influential (more about stamina and less about creativity?):

The criteria were simple: How long had it been around? Did people directly interact with it every day? Did people use it to do something meaningful?

-
which criteria could be used/stretched to say that e.g. the British Empire was 'great'. In fairness he is critical of MS Office, and of the *.psd file format...